By Alanah Nichole Davis
“It’s cold, please don’t let me see y’all’s bare legs,” read one of my recent Instagram stories.
Behind the words was a photo of a pair of coffee-colored knee highs I had bought on a crisp fall morning at the Safeway on 25th Street. I had left home overconfident in the unseasonably warm weather and skipped putting on tights under my gray pencil skirt.
That Instagram story was a peculiar statement for a millennial like me, someone who could have easily led a rebellion against hosiery and all things similar. I grew up under the tutelage of a Black woman of West Indian descent, born in 1950s New York City, a classy woman from a long line of them, who was adamant about undergarments and shapewear. From control-top opaque tights to pantyhose, knee highs, girdles and everything in between, my mother, Leslie Denise Creque-Davis, who passed away earlier this year in our Baltimore home, left me with an unwritten manifesto on what it means to “be ladylike,” as she would often say.
Growing up, I was made to wear three or four layers of garments under school uniforms, Easter dresses, or everyday clothes, which of course made me never want to wear them at all. As I got older, I began to despise layers and restrictive clothing altogether. Now, with all we know about neurodivergence and how certain textures, seams, or fits can cause discomfort or even anxiety, I can name what I couldn’t then. The wrong kind of turtleneck has ruined more than a few of my days over the last 30 years.
But now, with my mother gone and fewer things keeping us physically close, wearing tights feels like a hug from her, or at least a stern talking to about how one day my back will tighten up and hurt if I don’t wear layers of undergarments and a coat that comes past my butt. I wear my tights with pride now, knowing I was raised with sense. Knowing how important the lessons were, the ones my mother learned from her mother and from working at B. Altman and Company in her younger years, where my grandfather was a manager.
My mother was always particular about good brands, but even more so about good quality and a good cut. She passed that wisdom on to me. And even though I spent years rebelling against the gospel of shapewear by living in sports bras and rejecting anything with underwire, I recently bought a “good bra.”
I never thought something as simple as stockings would bring me peace on the days when grief feels heavier and I want to hear her voice. Sometimes I talk out loud to her as I color match hosiery to my skin tone in the aisles of various stores around town. I can still hear her stories about my great-aunt Louise Foreman and how her color was Town Taupe. I’m more of a mocha, chestnut or coffee colored hosiery girl myself.
While history books may credit a man named Allen E. Gant with creating pantyhose, it was Black women like my mother and countless others, both famous and not, who made them iconic. Women at lunch counters, in Baptist churches serving as ushers, or on stage in 1960s girl groups were the ones who truly brought tights and pantyhose into style.
It’s 2025, and it would be easy to dismiss the lessons I learned from the matriarchs in my family, call them outdated, and go out bare-legged like I might have when I was younger. But these days, I think more deeply about how much more graceful it feels to honor where we come from and how effortlessly chic it is to pair the right hosiery with the perfect outfit.